From early mathematical inspiration at school in Duffield, Derbyshire, Nigel recalls his often unplanned progress via Jesus College, Oxford, Princeton, Cambridge and Warwick, before his final return to Oxford. Along the way such luminaries as Michael Atiyah and Simon Donaldson play their part as Nigel talks about time spent with physicists in Cambridge, the Eureka moments when the answers take shape, to his final reflections on a career where the name Hitchin is attached to so many of the tools of modern geometry and which culminated in the award of the 2016 Shaw Prize.